Posts Tagged ‘stop motion’

Every Ray Harryhausen Stop-Motion Monster EVAR

Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

Found this on BoingBoing – it is chock full of awesomesauce. I grew up on the films of Ray Harryhausen and worked with my friend Bryan in his mother’s garage (and in the back room of our art teacher, Paul Jones) to make our own dubious works of art. Like so many before and after me, a large part of my aesthetic has been informed, coloured and directed by Harryhausen’s films.

Can you name them all? I can. Along with the cast, the crews and an endless litany of minutia. I’ve watched them at 3 in the morning on a small screen black and white TV with shabby reception from Barrie – I’ve luxuriated in theatres as their light has basked me with its Dynamation goodness – and I own several copies of each on various media (including some on flip books for cryin’ out loud) – and I never tire of tasting with all my senses the works of Mr. Harryhausen.

My Missus, through her work with Cuppa Coffee Animation, had the opportunity to sculpt a stop-motion figure of Harryhausen himself which was presented to him when he came to Toronto to promote his book and gave a talk. I had the chance to meet him then – but stayed at the back of the room – nervous and fearful for I do not know what – but happy to just be where I was, always was, in the dim shadows observing the show before me.

Thank you, Ray.

Cheers.

P. S. You can find our Ruffus The Dog homage to Ray Harryhausen in the Sinbad episodes here and here. Enjoy!

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The Story Of Stop Motion Animation

Wednesday, November 10th, 2010

When I was a kid – the age of my son, actually – I and my best friend Bryan would make elaborate stop-motion animated films on Super 8 film in his mother’s garage and later in the back room office of our art teacher, Paul Jones. Massively elaborate productions – none of which, alas, have survived.

We were addicted to everything and anything related to stop motion, most notably the works of Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen but also Georges Melies, George Pal, Norman MacLaren and others. Each new issue of Forrest J. Ackerman’s Famous Monsters Of Filmland would be devoured for any clues as to technique and process which would then studiously attempt to emulate with our feeble collection of tools.

All of this was long before I became a performer in theatre, television and film and a great many decades prior to being able to once again hold the reigns of my own productions (albeit in larger studios than Mrs. McCormick’s garage) and manipulate small figures to do my bidding and tell nifty stories.

What goes around comes around, I guess.

My wife, who is a puppeteer but also an artist, designer and animator, is currently doing a lot of work for a prominent stop-motion animation company here in Toronto. She sculpted a caricature animation figure of Harryhausen that was given to him as a gift when he visited town promoting his book. I was there but too shy to thank him for my life.

All of my studies and work have in one way or another always been linked or related to this form; from mime, commedia del art̩, clowning, acrobatics, dance, puppetry, special visual effects design, CG animation, script writing, directing, you name it Рall except being a plongeur at the Gavroche Gourmand or cooking burgers at the Brunswick House Рall these varied gigs were all connected with the means to tell stories through the visual and physical actions of characters.

Today, over at Flavorwire, I stumbled across Chloe Fleury‘s marvellous animated short which conveys the history and attendant magic of the art of stop-motion animation. It is very sweet.

Enjoy.

My own last effort at true stop-motion was this brief intro I submitted for Ze Frank’s The Show:

I love stop-motion.

Cheers.

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Pencil Test

Monday, April 6th, 2009

Geek alert! This an animation entitled: Pencil Test. It was created in 1988 to show what could be done on the then new Mac II computers.

I’ve been messing with CG for a while now and although I am far from being any sort of pro with packages like Cinema 4D, Blender and others – farting around with machinama too – I do enjoy what can be created with them. The tools just get better and better and the machines get faster and faster. The advances made in the field have been extraordinary.

Here’s the behind-the-scenes of Pencil Test. What’s extraordinary is they are talking about using computers with only 4 megabytes of RAM. 4 megs?! Christ – I have pencils with more memory now.

About 10 years ago I had the good fortune to meet up with Steve “Spaz” Williams and give him and his family a tour of our shop where we made our kids TV productions. He was lamenting the mechanical realism of CG at that time, where re-creating a faux reality was more important than innovation in character design and pushing the art of the medium. We agreed that the best CG would be to created something that looked like torn out sketch taped to a popsicle stick and waggled from under the camera. Silly idea, yeah, but we got a giggle out of it.

I love puppets and always will – but I’m not wholly devoted to them. I began my interest in filmmaking with my friend Bryan, making stop motion movies in his mother’s garage and in the back room of our high school art teacher’s office. That was puppets too – sort of. My interest in film brought me into theatre studies and I became (among other things) a mime. God help me, I still shudder when I say that. But my work in mime and mask and physical theatre was also a kind of puppetry – manipulating the human body to express character and emotion. All those things combined, the physical and visual expression of character and narrative, fed my ability to work with the Muppets and gain a career in puppetry.

It’s all the same shit.

As geeky and dated as these videos are it’s still refreshing to see that the most simple tools can be used to created works of wonder and amusement.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go finish my own animation work – but first I gotta find some popsicle sticks.

Cheers.

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